The Tin Can Tree

'No,' said Simon. 'You get another customer?'

'Not in the last few days, no. But I took a bunch on my own a while ago. When you're done I'll show you.'

'Okay,' said Simon.

'Olives,' Ansel reminded him.

James went over to the back window and looked out. There was the Pikes' Nellie, burrowing her way through a tangle of wild daisies and bachelor's buttons. He had been planning to pick Joan a bunch of those daisies, before all this happened. They were her favourite flowers. Now he couldn't; the house would be stuffed with hothouse funeral flowers. And anyway, he couldn't just walk in there with a bunch of daisies in his hand and risk disturbing the Pikes. The daisies would have grown old there, waving in the sunshine on their long green stems, before he could go back to doing things like that again.

The pizza was in the oven. Ansel slammed the door on it and wiped his hands and said, 'There, now.'

'How much longer?' Simon asked.

'Oh, I don't know. Fifteen-twenty minutes. We'll go out where it's cool and wait on it. You coming, James?'

James followed them out to the living room. It seemed very dark and cool here now. Ansel settled down on his couch with a long contented groan, and Simon went over to Ansel's window and stood watching the road.

'Anybody seen those people?' he asked James.

'What people?'

'My mama and them. Anybody seen them?'

'No, not yet.'

'Well, anyway,' said Simon, 'I'll reckon I'll just run on over and have a look, see if maybe they haven't -'

'I think we'd have seen them if they'd come,' said James. 'Or heard them, one.'

'Still and all, I guess I'll just-'

'You two,' Ansel said. 'Do you have to stand over me like that?' He was lying full length now, with his head propped against one of the sofa arms. 'Kind of overwhelming,' he said, and James moved Simon gently away by one shoulder.

'I almost forgot,' he said. 'You want to see my pictures?'

'Oh, well I-'

‘They're good ones.'

'Well.'

James went down the little hallway to his dark-room. There was a damp and musky smell there, and only the dimmest light. He headed for the filing cabinet in the corner, where he kept his pictures, and opened the bottom drawer. The latest ones were at the front, laid away carefully (taking pictures for fun wasn't something he could afford very often), and when he pulled them out he handled them gently, examining the first two alone for a minute before he returned to the living room.

'Here you go,' he said to Simon. 'Your hands clean?'

'Yes.'

His hands were covered with tomato sauce, but he held the pictures by the rims so James didn't say anything. The first picture didn't impress Simon. He studied it only a minute and then sniffed. 'One of those,' he said. James grinned and handed him the next one. Neither Simon nor Janie Rose had ever liked anything but straight, posed portraits – preferably of someone they could recognize, which always made them giggle. But when James wasn't taking wedding pictures, or photographs for the Larksville newspaper, he turned away from portraits altogether. He had the idea of photographing everyone he knew in the way his mind pictured them when they weren't around. And the way people stuck in his memory was odd – they were doing something without looking at him, usually, wheeling a wheelbarrow up a hill or hunting under the dining-room table for a spool of thread. Old girlfriends of his used to object to being photographed in their most faded blue jeans, the way he remembered them from some picnic. But almost always he won out in the end; the pictures of people in his mind and in his filing cabinet were nearly identical. Joan he imagined in a dust storm, the way he had first seen her (she had come down the road with two suitcases and a drawstring handbag, spitting dust out of her mouth and turning her face sideways to the wind as she walked.) For a long time now he had waited for another dust storm, and last week one had come. That was in those first two pictures, the ones that Simon had barely glanced at. Even when James said, 'That's your cousin Joan, if you don't know,' thinking to make Simon look twice, Simon only raised his eyebrows. It was the third picture he liked. In that one Ansel was lying on his couch, looking up at the sky through the window and absently playing with the cord of the shade. 'Ansel!' Simon said, and Ansel turned his head and looked at him.

'What now?' he asked.

'I just seen your picture here.'

'Oh, yes,' Ansel said.

'Of you on your couch and all.'

'Oh, yes. Here, let me look. 'He raised himself up on one elbow, reaching out toward the picture, and Simon brought it over to him. "That's me, all right,' said Ansel. He studied it for a while, smiling. 'It's not bad,' he said.

'I think it's a right good picture.'

'Yep. Not bad at all.' He handed the picture back and lay down again, staring up at the ceiling and still smiling. 'They're wonderful things, pictures,' he said.

'Well, some of them.'

'Very remaining things, you know?'

'I don't like them other kind, though,' Simon said. 'Dust clouds and all. I can't see what they're for.'

'They're for me,' said James. 'Here, I got another one of Ansel.'

'James,' Ansel said, 'do your legs ever get to feeling kind of numb? Kind of achey-numb?'

'Prop them up.'

'Propping up won't do it.'

'It's what you get for not having your shots,' James said.

'Oh, well. Right behind the knee, it is.' He propped his legs against the back of the couch and slid farther down, so that his feet were the highest part of him. _This couch is too short,' he said. 'Here, Simon. Hand me the next one.'

The next picture had Ansel sitting up, looking self-conscious. When Ansel saw it he smiled his dippy little smile again and brought the picture closer to examine it. _ 'This is one I posed myself,' he said. 'Had James take it like I wanted. James, I believe it's my shoes aggravating that feeling.'

James set the rest of the pictures beside Simon and reached over to untie Ansel's shoes. 'If you'd get the right size,' he said.

'No, it's to do with my illness. I can tell.'

'It's on Wednesdays you get your shots,' said James. 'This is Saturday. That's five times you missed.'

'Lot you care. Listen -'He twisted around, so that he was facing Simon. 'What was I talking about? The picture. That's right. I was about to say, in my estimation this picture is the best of the lot. The one of me sitting up.' He tilted the picture toward the light. 'Heroic, like,' he said. 'Profile to the window and all.'

'The other one's better,' said Simon.

'What other one?'

'The first one. You lying down.'

'That's because you're used to me lying down,' Ansel said. He sighed and tossed the picture onto the coffee table. 'Everyone's used to it. When I stand up they hardly recognize me. Faces change, standing up. Become more bottom-heavy. Pass me the next one.'

'I think the pizza must be done,' said James. 'Hey, Ansel?'

'Well, take it out. This one of Mr Abbott-I'd be insulted if I was him. Troweling up the garden plot with his back to the camera and his rear end sticking out.'

James got up and went to the kitchen. The pizza-smell filled the whole room, and when he opened the oven he thought it looked done. From a hook on the wall he took a pot-holder and then hauled the pizza out and set it on the counter, burning one finger on the way. 'Ansel!' he called. He came to the living room doorway. Ansel was just bending over a picture, rocking slightly back and forth and frowning at it, and Simon was sorting through the rest of them. 'Ansel, 'James repeated.

'This one here,' said Ansel, 'ought not to've been included.'

'Which one?' Simon asked.

'I'm ashamed of James. You ought not to see it.'

'Well, I just saw it,' said Simon. 'What's the matter with it?'

'Nothing's the matter. I'll just set it aside.'